The Winter's Chill
by greenleaf-in-bloom
Summary: This is Draco's story. The time has come, and one dragon has to decide his allegiance. The decision is painful. It brings back memories of things better forgotten. Memories of school years. Memories of the Dark Lord's past. Of Harry Potter.


The Winter's Chill  
  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
  
Its eyes were a fiery red, but his were light grey and lacked the energy and anger of a dragon. His name meant dragon, but it was unfitting. He was nothing like a dragon. Except that he was trained to be viscious and bloodthirsty.  
  
Trained - it was a better word than raised. Perhaps not better, but more accurate. His father had never raised him. He had told him how he was expected to behave, and punished him if he did not, until he was obedient.  
  
In that was he was not like a dragon, again. Dragons were rebellious. Dragons were brave and angry. Draco was a coward, and he hated it.  
  
Had it not been for the fact that Gryffindors were all worthless scum, according to his father, he would have preferred the virtures of Gryffindor to the worthlessness and rigid standards of Slytherin.  
  
He was always bitter and harshly cold, especially in his eyes. A dragon should be furious and red-hot and fiery.  
  
He hated the summer. The winter was his favorite time of year, for not only its cold but its silence, its frosty stillness, the snow collecting on the branches of trees in the Forbidden Forest.  
  
He was well respected in his tower for his brutal attitude, his ruminative silence, his wit and humor - true Slytherin humor, they said, the kind Salazar himself would laugh at - and his Death Eater father. None of this was what he wanted. If he had had a choice, from birth, he would have wanted to be a remarkable child - silent and brilliant. Tactical. He didn't want to have had access to a wand from age five, didn't want either to have learned his first Dark curse at the age of six. He didn't want to have learned never to try to escape his father by age eight, and didn't want to be denied the ability to love anything.  
  
But his concience was nonexistant. And Draco Malfoy had nothing to love.  
  
When he was nine, his father had given him responsibility for a fire salamander. It had chirped at him when it wanted to go into the fireplace, and he had called up the house-elf, Dobby, who was always terribly kind if also very stupid. Dobby had lit a small fire and he had let the fire salamander scamper into it. It had made a purring noise. "What is you naming it, Master?" Dobby had asked. Draco had smiled thoughtfully at nothing. "Caesar," he had answered.  
  
He was openly cruel to Dobby around his parents, but always apologized. Dobby was the only thing he ever talked to, the only thing he ever had a good chance to be kind to.  
  
Caesar had crawled out of the fire onto his hand. After a while, Dobby had left and his father had come in to talk to him. Halfway through their talk, Caesar, whom Draco had already grown very attatched to, had started to chirp again. Draco stood from his chair, moving towards the fire, and his father had grabbed his wrist. "What are you doing, Draco?" he had asked, his voice cold steel.  
  
"He wants to be in the fire," Draco had explained.  
  
"He must learn, Draco," Lucius had hissed. "You are the master, not vice versa. You put him in the fire when you want him to be in the fire."  
  
"But I want him to be happy," Draco had protested.  
  
"Then you are the pet of a salamander," Lucius had said flatly, and he had pushed his son back into the chair and stood there next to him as the salamander had started to cry harder and louder, a long, pitiful squeal. Then its cry had faded, and it slumped on Draco's hand. Not dead, no. But weak.  
  
Tears stung in Draco's eyes as he stared at his pet, avoiding looking at the awful cruel man who was his father. It wasn't fair. "Don't be the pet of a worthless creature," Lucius said, his voice soft, and yet deadly as a knife. He had left, and Draco had run over and set Caesar in the fireplace, hoping that it would wake. But when it did, it looked at him in pure terror and shivered.  
  
He had not cried, but it had been a close thing. When he was ten, his father had taken him hunting, and had shot a baby unicorn, its gold coat easy to spot through the green leaves. He had gathered some of its hair, its horn, and a small vial of its blood. He had taken the rest of it back to the Mansion, and had left it on the outskirts of the grounds. Later, when Draco was walking in silence along in the snow, he had found the rotting body, gold pieces of dulled flesh still clinging to its bones.  
  
His mother was kindhearted, but stupid, meek, and obedient. She didn't care for Draco like a mother should, instead she treated him like she would a servant. Not that she made him work, no. That was for Lucius to do.  
  
He went to Hogwarts, and met Harry Potter, when he was eleven. When he was a baby, his father would tell him the story of the fall of the great Dark Lord every night, and he would speak the name Harry Potter. At birth, Lucius had taken him to Voldemort, and offered him. From the time he was an hour old, his path had been laid for him. By his father.  
  
When he found out who the skinny boy with broken glasses and black hair was, there was a rush of emotion he felt. He lived with Muggles. His family was cruel and awful. His father was pureblooded. He was rich and famous, and hated it. He was just like Draco.  
  
Draco hated him.  
  
There was something about Harry that demanded hatred from Draco, and something about Draco that twanged when he saw Harry. At one year old, he had been famous. At school, he was a celebrity - he was favored by the teachers. He had friends - true friends, not the kind Draco was cursed with. Crabbe and Goyle's fathers had brought them over when Draco was three, and Lucius had put the three of them in a room together for an afternoon. Vincent and Gregory had been awed by Draco's intellect, and Draco by their strength. But he hated them, because they were big and stupid. Yet once a week, the two were brought by their fathers, and Draco was forbidden to leave. Hours with no one else to talk to had him speaking to them, and they respected him more. He craved the respect and the awe. They did not laugh when he told them about Caesar, only nodded.  
  
And when they were ten and Draco had fallen down the stairs and been knocked unconcious, then Crabbe had lifted him easily and carried him to his mother. He had not scorned them since. His stories of his father had gotten stuck in their heads, and he never forgot that, and forgave them their stupidity. They had brought him to his mother, and she had healed his bruises.  
  
But Harry Potter - his friends, the poor redhead Weasley brat and the brainy Muggle-born Granger, they were loyal to him. True loyalty, not blind reverence. Potter was noble and honest and modest and kind.  
  
He was everything that Draco was forbidden to be.  
  
So Draco envied him - not hated, but envied. He almost wished sometimes that Potter knew that.  
  
It was not hatred. But too many of his father's teachings would fill his head.  
  
Someday, he vowed, someday the world would know. 


End file.
